this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
200 points (90.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26980 readers
1377 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does anyone else feel like technology - specifically consumer tech - kinda peaked over a decade ago? I'm 37, and I remember being awed between like 2011 and 2014 with phones, voice assistants, smart home devices, and what websites were capable of. Now it seems like much of this stuff either hasn't improved all that much, or is straight up worse than it used to be. Am I crazy? Have I just been out of the market for this stuff for too long?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 199 points 1 day ago (3 children)

To quote one of my favorite authors:


“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”


― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

[–] [email protected] 44 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but Facebook was invented when I was a teen and I knew pretty quickly that shit was evil.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 hours ago

At 15 the thing i wanted most in the world was an escape hatch from all these other assholes I had to spend my time with everyday at school. Right around that time Facebook arrived ensuring they would have more access to me and the people around me more then any other time in history.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

This is the answer.

I beg to disagree. The answer is 42. The real issue being: to what question? :p

[–] [email protected] 37 points 23 hours ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

would be nice, but isn't true according to Douglas Adams himself:

Inspiration for the number 42

Douglas Adams revealed the reason why he chose forty-two in this message .

"It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'".

personally, i think it's way funnier that it is actually, completely, deliberately meaningless ;)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

Fucking hell it's true. This is exactly the kind of obscure nonsense I love, how did it take me 30 years to learn this?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 23 hours ago

That's very cool

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

What about things that are invented when I'm younger than 15?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 23 hours ago

That's number 1.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago

Man, the toys invented around that time are the best.... But that's probably all you're really paying attention to at that point.

And for kids now? Well they have things like Skibidi Toilet to keep them occupied.

But for a more serious answer I think that's when they're in their most creative mindset and everything is new to them and they're learning how things work.

Obviously the exact age at which someone starts to take an interest in tech is going to be different from person to person. For me, I was a fan of reading popular science magazines at a younger age as well as manuals on all of the different setting/functions/features of operating systems...